V for Vendetta - Alan Moore, David Lloyd

V for Vendetta - Alan Moore, David Lloyd

A powerful story about loss of freedom and individuality, V FOR VENDETTA takes place in a totalitarian England following a devastating war that changed the face of the planet. In a world without political freedom, personal freedom and precious little faith in anything comes a mysterious man in a white porcelain mask who fights political oppressors through terrorism and seemingly absurd acts. It's a gripping tale of the blurred lines between ideological good and evil.

The series is set in a near-future Britain. Nuclear weapons were removed from Britain following a victory for Labour in 1983, sparing it from nuclear attack in a limited nuclear war that left the country mostly physically intact. An extreme fascist single-party state has arisen, called Norsefire, that maintains control of the country through food shortages (arising during the nuclear winter), government-controlled media, secret police, a planned economy, and concentration camps for racial, political, and sexual minorities. There is an emphasis on technology, especially closed-circuit television monitoring in the mode of George Orwell's 1984. (Closed-circuit television had not yet become common in the UK at the time Moore wrote the series. Today, London has the world's highest concentration of C.C.T.V. Moore also forecast increased computer usage.) When the series begins, political conflict has ended, the death camps have finished their work and have been closed, and the public is largely complacent, until "V" — an anarchist terrorist dressed as Guy Fawkes, mask and all, with an improbable array of abilities and resources — begins an elaborate, violent, and theatrical campaign to bring down the government.

…the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think, and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history.Alan Moore

This is one of the gratest and more controversial comics out there. The scripting by Moore, even if a little naive in certain aspects at the begining of the story, is in every other respect, brilliant.EnJoy =-)